


No. 101

by Sparcck



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2017-2018 NHL Season, Blow Jobs, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pittsburgh Penguins, Self-Doubt, Semi-Public Sex, Soul-Searching, Specifically Blow Jobs on a Bus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-06 06:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14050704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparcck/pseuds/Sparcck
Summary: Here’s Zhenya’s secret: he’s always angry.





	No. 101

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after the January 18, 2018 game against the Kings in LA. There were reports of two people on the bus that Sid usually takes to the hotel, and, I mean, who else could it have been?
> 
> Massive thanks to [sevenfists](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfists/pseuds/sevenfists) and [saintroux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintroux/pseuds/saintroux/works?fandom_id=13058) for listening to me go on about this for the past three months, and to sevenfists in particular for the hand-holding, the amazing beta, and for constantly pushing me to be better. 
> 
> And thanks, always, to [k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/koncupiscence). That was a great night of hockey, but as long as we're together they all are. <3

The door leading from the basement maze of the Staples Center to the parking structure was on a pneumatic hinge, which Zhenya found out the hard way when he tried to slam it behind him as he left and it bounced out of his hand and hung there, drifting slowly shut.

Through the glass, Zhenya could see Phil down the hall, trying to hide a smile. Zhenya scowled at him. 

Phil grinned and gave a little salute, then turned right and disappeared down a connecting hallway, preferring to go the long way around the convention center rather than facing the fans who would be waiting at the intersection outside the parking structure.

He stepped back as the door opened and a few staff members came through. They all very deliberately didn't look at him, so he assumed his face matched his insides, which was a comfort. 

The team bus was idling on the other side of the lot behind a row of loading trucks, waiting, he knew, for Sidney, who always took it the short block to the hotel rather than spending the entire walk mobbed by fans because Sid was very particular about to which things he was unable to just fucking say no.

After his personal shitty end to what should have been a great game, but before Dumo was able to put on that song that Zhenya had started to grudgingly like even though it would inevitably start playing on a loop as he was trying to fall asleep later that night, Zhenya had stood in front of his borrowed stall and was contemplating how many tries it would take to smash his helmet into pieces against it when Sid and Tanger came in.

Zhenya couldn't hear what they were saying, but Tanger's mouth was doing the thing it did when he was being pissy about something in French, and Sid was nodding along very seriously, unbuckling his chin strap to run his hand through his sweaty hair, making it stand up crazily.

Zhenya knew it was gross and full of gel. He rubbed his fingers together, in and out of a fist.

Sid caught Zhenya's eye and tipped his chin up in a question. Zhenya clenched his jaw and stared back for too long without saying or doing anything.

Jen came by and paused, narrowing her eyes at him. He could feel the sweat dripping between his pecs and under his shinguards. "You've got five minutes before I let them in," she said, cutting her eyes towards the closed door to the hallway, the only thing keeping back the media. "Beat it."

He had. Now he could walk the block to the hotel, have a few minutes to change into something more comfortable, mutter to himself in the quiet of his own bathroom, maybe angrily pack his suitcase, before he had to be back down to meet Sid and Reaves for dinner. 

Instead, he paused in front of the bus. 

The driver was leaning against the wall, drinking from a Penguins-branded black paper cup. He lifted it at Zhenya when he saw him.

Zhenya nodded at the door. "Okay?"

The guy blinked at him. "Of course. But we have to wait for--"

Zhenya flapped a hand at him and stepped up into the stepwell. "His majesty, yes?"

The guy grinned into his coffee cup. "You said it, not me."

Inside, the bus was dark and warm, the heat blasting even though, by most people's standards, it wasn't that cold out. But LA was full of Zhenya's people, people who turned on the heat if it dipped below 24 degrees. The purple and blue strip lighting along the ceiling reflected off the tinted windows.

He settled into his usual seat in the sixth row, on the aisle, and scrolled through Instagram without really seeing anything, just general impressions of his friends’ lives: Ilyuka and Kolya and Flower and Duper, all getting along just fine without him there, of course. 

He paused on a shot of Ilyuka and SKA on the team's charter plane. "Merry Christmas from the SKA squad!" Ilyuka had written. Zhenya worried at his lower lip with his teeth, sloughing off some chapped skin. He tapped the photo twice to like it.

Under that was a video from Flower during practice, flopping around on his belly in his net and laughing as three of his new teammates tried to shovel pucks past him. There was a caption in French, which Zhenya was too tired to parse, but he recognized the words "thank you" and "happy" and, of course, the All-Star hashtag was in English. 

By now the low thrum of annoyance humming through his nervous system had become almost comforting, something he liked to stoke every now and then, just to make sure it was still there. He wasn't ready to get over it.

He chose the shopping cart emoji, the closest to a sieve that he could find, then double-tapped the photo.

"Hey, G."

Zhenya looked up to see Sid in the step well. 

"You okay?" Sid hovered, only his head visible over the railing. 

For some reason, it made a fresh wave of irritation gnaw at Zhenya’s gut. He chucked his phone on the seat next to him. "You need engraved invitation?"

Sid rolled his eyes. "I dunno, do I?"

Zhenya huffed and stretched one leg into the aisle, raising an eyebrow.

Sid's mouth pursed, and he stepped up into the aisle, his face stuck somewhere between calculating and tender, assessing Zhenya's emotional pain points from a distance. He looked good in his new suit, a dark grey, subtle plaid, that made his shoulders look even bigger. His collar was still buttoned up tight, but his tie had been hastily done, the knot pulled slightly to one side.

Zhenya stared at it and tested the tip of his tongue against his right canine.

Sid slid into the seat across the aisle from Zhenya and gave him a small smile.

Zhenya didn't smile back, but it was a close thing. "What."

Sid knocked his knee against Geno's sprawled thigh and left it there. "Come on, G."

Zhenya folded his arms and looked away, but let his leg lean into Sid's. He heard what Sid was leaving unspoken -- he had two points out of the night, he wasn't sure of the numbers but his legs had been letting him know that he was bordering on seeing too much ice time for too few shifts, Sully liked to call quick line changes at the end of games when opponents were getting desperate -- and he agreed with them all. 

But there was that itch under his skin. It was familiar, he remembered it from being a kid, from being too small, too poor. His father had joked that Zhenya had willed his bones to grow, but Zhenya also remembers his father’s gentle hands on his calves when Zhenya woke in the night in agony, his bones pulling like taffy as he grew into his emotions.

It came and went over the years, powering him through injury and bad coaching, locker room mutinies and friends getting traded. It eventually burned itself out.

But it lingered now. From the post-season through the summer and into training camp, and showed no signs of letting up. Even now, exhausted, he felt ready to go, felt like he could have skated for the entire sixty and still wouldn't have been satisfied. 

When Sully called for him to change at the end of the third, Zhenya ignored him. Sully had jumped up onto the bench and screamed across the ice, his face almost purple and for a second Zhenya thought...well, maybe he just wouldn't. Maybe he would run the clock down, fuck Sully, fuck Jim, fuck Sid, fuck Pittsburgh. He wanted another goal, he wanted to pick a fight, he wanted to be on the ice when the horn sounded and they won. What could anyone do to him? Without him--

Sid, on the bench, turned his face toward Zhenya, his expression neutral, and Zhenya found his skates taking him across the ice and back over the boards. Everyone studiously ignored his shouting, even Sully, who leaned around him to talk to Recchi like nothing was happening.

Sid let his shoulder brush Zhenya's when Zhenya finally sat, and the gentle touch had been more gasoline for the fire.

But here, on the bus, Sid leaned forward across the aisle, his elbows on his giant thighs, his face soft and patient. Zhenya took a breath and held it for a long moment.

"Zhenya," Sid said, quietly, and Zhenya let it out, hard.

"Been a long day," Zhenya said, struggling to hold onto the fight in his chest, his shoulders still up around his ears.

Sid hummed and slowly moved forward, out of his seat, until one knee and then the other was on the bus floor. "No, I know."

Zhenya darted his eyes down the aisle, and a wash of heat scalded his scalp and cheeks and throat. 

Sid shuffled closer, put one hand on the seat between Zhenya's legs and the other on Zhenya's thigh, sliding his hand up and in. "Just us," he said.

Something loud thunked against the side of the bus – the door to the baggage area being opened, and then they heard low voices as Dana’s crew started loading their bags.

Sid smiled, his crooked, smug smile that never failed to get Zhenya going. “No one will bother us, I took care of it.” He looked up at Zhenya through his long dark lashes, all buttoned up in his suit, still crisp and fussily neat, except for his tie and, of course, now his knees, which must already be wrecked by the bus floor. “We’ve got time.”

Zhenya shifted, bracketed Sid's shoulders with his thighs and reached down to slide his fingers along Sid's chin, his thumb over Sid's lower lip, dragging it down to show the wet inside of it, his pink tongue behind his teeth. “I need it. Time, I mean.”

"I know,” Sid said again, pressed his teeth into the pad of Zhenya's thumb, licked at it quick before tilting his chin up. ”You always do.”

It stung, the hurt catching Zhenya off guard. He felt punch-drunk, emotion-drunk, maybe, from the game, from the season, from having Sid on his knees in front of him. Zhenya's throat felt tight with this strange, formless anger, and he let his hand trail over the sloppy knot of Sid's tie, then looped the fabric into his fist, quick, tugging Sid's head forward. 

Sid made a noise, like a moan and a laugh at the same time, and it sparked along Zhenya's nerves, getting his blood going again. 

The fight in Zhenya's chest turned, the edges of it going molten. Zhenya wanted to ruin him.

"Get me out," Zhenya said, leaning back and shifting his hips forward. He kept Sid's tie in his fist, felt the tremor of Sid swallowing through the taut fabric.

Sid unzipped Zhenya, slow and careful, slipped his nimble fingers into the slit in Zhenya's briefs to draw out his dick. Zhenya was half hard, had been since he got on the bus, knowing that Sid wouldn't be far behind him. Zhenya knocked his hand aside and Sid sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes narrowing. But he didn't say anything, just put his hands on Zhenya's thighs, his short nails raking hard over the fine wool of Zhenya's pantlegs.

Zhenya caught his tongue between his teeth and palmed himself, tugging Sid closer with his other hand. 

"Open," he said, and, oh, Sid did, opened his mouth for Zhenya's dick, because Zhenya had told him to. He didn't look away, flexed his fingers, waiting patiently.

The loop of emotion wound tighter around Zhenya's heart, making him struggle for breath. It was all tangled up, with Sid, it always had been, ever since they had fallen into bed together after their first Cup, all their clumsy flirting coalescing into reality. 

They didn’t talk about it, they never did. They somehow navigated the ebb and flow of their relationship, one that was structured around the season and other relationships, without calling it what it was.

Or what it could be, Zhenya corrected himself, looking everywhere at Sid’s face except his eyes. The thing Zhenya could never bring himself to name, relieved and restless every time they got through another season and whatever they were doing just… ended again, until the next time.

Zhenya slid his foreskin back and guided the head of his dick against Sid's open mouth, rubbing against his lower lip. Sid let Zhenya slip inside against his tongue, and Zhenya groaned at the slick warmth of it against him.

He put one hand in Sid's hair, and the back of it was soft and ungelled. He laughed a little, and Sid pulled back to look up at him.

"What?"

"Shh." Zhenya nudged at his mouth with his dick again, and Sid opened obediently.

 _Fuck_.

"I hear what people say," Zhenya said quietly, feeding Sid his dick in slow, careful centimeters. "Look tired, look slow. Look like...what's word Sully always say, not play the same all the time?"

Sid tried to move back to answer, but Zhenya tightened his fingers in the curls at Sid's nape, hard, and held him still. Sid made a small noise in the back of this throat and let his mouth go slack, let his fingers uncurl on Zhenya's thighs, and Zhenya pressed into him.

"I feel it in me," he said, pulling out until the crown of his dick peeled Sid's lips away from his teeth, pushed in again, deeper, "All I want to do, how I want to play. Who I—“ he stumbled over the words. “Things I don’t know how to say."

Sid was drooling around his dick now, gasping in shorts breaths when Zhenya let him, his hips rolling in small, tight circles. Zhenya pulled his head closer, fucking his mouth slow and deep and deliberate.

"Every year, every night, Sid, I can't-- I just want--" Fuck English, really. He knew the word prove in English, but that wasn't it. He didn't need to prove himself. He knew he worked hard, he knew he was smart. He didn't need to be on a list or at a special game, it wouldn't matter if he fit into a system or played too many minutes or if he stopped playing tomorrow.

No, he wanted to shove it in everyone's faces: that he was better than they wanted him to be and there was nothing they could do about it; that years from now they would all be in the ground, but his name would be carved over and over where everyone would be forced to look at it, right there with Sid's.

Last season, this thing with Sid hadn’t really ended. Not like usual. Zhenya had an international texting plan that said otherwise, and hours of Skype calls, not even always for sex. He had watched Sid on stage at the NHL 100 ceremony and felt an indescribable mix of pride and jealousy and, later, when Sid had skipped out on a PR appearance to Skype with him about nothing in particular, a deep, endless affection. 

He pulled back suddenly and squeezed the base of his cock as Sid gasped for air. "Sid," he said, the name punched out of him.

"C'mon," Sid said, like a challenge, his voice shredded, staring up at Zhenya with dark eyes, tears caught in his thick lashes. He opened his mouth again, his tongue against his plush lower lip.

Zhenya jacked himself almost helplessly, relieved to let the control finally slip from his grasp; suddenly the loop around his heart pulled too tight, snapped as his body bent forward and he came in thick spurts into Sid's mouth, across his lips and chin and throat.

He dragged Sid up on his knees and kissed him, hard and messy. His heartbeat roared in his ears and he felt, he felt--

"Sid," Zhenya breathed out, against Sid's mouth, and with it went everything. 

He sat back hard in his seat and Sid put his head on his thigh, his shoulders heaving like he was still finding his breath.

Zhenya's fist was still in Sid's hair, and he relaxed his fingers, sifting through Sid’s hair gently as he pulled away, feeling a sudden aching tenderness in his gut, pressing against the backs of his eyes. He felt wrung out, and he struggled to keep his voice level when he spoke.

“Think we should talk,” he rasped, pressing the heels of his hands to his aching eyes.

“Okay.” Sid reached up to touch the back of his hand and there was a long pause. "Hey."

"Yeah," Zhenya croaked, towards the ceiling.

"Move in with me.”

Zhenya jerked his hands away from his eyes. “What?”

“Move in with me. Or I can move in with you.” Sid was staring down at Zhenya’s lap, and Zhenya suddenly became aware that dick was laying between them, soft against his thigh. Sid gently tucked him back in and zipped him back up, before sitting back on his heels. 

"I keep waiting, because I know you have a whole emotional process, but.” He shrugged. “You’re not alone. You don’t have to be.”

There was a rushing noise in Zhenya’s ears. “Keep waiting,” Zhenya said slowly. “How long?”

Sid smiled wryly, that little self-deprecating curl that made Zhenya’s heart turn over. “Does it matter?”

Did it? Sid’s patience was legendary, almost aggressive, drawn from the same well that made him so good at what he did, practicing the same shot over and over and over, running the same drills until he could do them with his eyes closed, failure driving him almost as much as success.

But now Zhenya’s view of it shifted. He looked down into Sid’s face, blotchy with exertion, salt caked at the corners of his eyes from dried tears, and his mouth puffy and red. There was come on his collar, on his tie, a crust of it under his lower lip. 

Sid had been waiting for him, and Zhenya knew it, had maybe been taking advantage of that well; Sid would have let Zhenya drain him dry.

He had worked so hard for so long, for every scrap of recognition. But never with Sid, who looked at him that first night years ago, a runaway who couldn’t speak English, and held out his hand, and _knew_ him.

“Oh, Sid,” Zhenya murmured, and took Sid’s face in his hands. 

Sid met him halfway, kissing the breath out of him. When he pulled back, sitting in the window seat, Sid’s eyes were suspiciously damp, though he would, years from now, deny that he ever cried kneeling on the team bus in the underbelly of the fucking Staples Center.

“Move in with me,” Sid said again, mulishly, and Zhenya knew in that moment what he had been unable to name: he loved him. Fiercely and selfishly, with his entire being, Zhenya loved him.

There was a knock on the window, and then, a moment later, the bus driver’s voice came from the stepwell. “We all ready?”

Zhenya looked into Sid’s eyes and said, “Yes, I’m ready.”

  
  


+


End file.
